The Funny Man
by True Blue Fool
Summary: Maybe one day I would remember, with my funny man close by to chase away the monsters in my head, but today, I was going on an adventure. One-shot


**A/N** Real life sucks. Due to suckiness, I will not be getting back to any of my chaptered stories for a while. But you probably got that by now.

* * *

When I first met the strange man with the funny blue box, I wasn't afraid. I wasn't worried about stranger danger or any of the other things I'd been warned about as a child. He was a funny man with a funny box; what was there to be scared of?

When I went with him, I found that there was plenty to be scared of. There were all sorts of monsters all over the universe, and a lot of them were human. But I was never really too scared- at least, never for too long, because the funny man with the blue box was the one thing that all the monsters were the most scared of.

He was always so sorry when things got to be too scary, always so apologetic, swearing up and down that he would take me home right away. Well, right after he would take me to some place wonderful to make up for it. Then he would get so wrapped up that he'd forget to take me home, and we'd keep traveling until the next scary thing happened, and he'd promise to take me home. He was always forgetting, but I didn't mind. I wanted to spend the rest of my life traveling with the funny man in the strange blue box.

The blue box seemed to agree. Out of all the wonderful things he'd show me, I still think his funny little box is the most wonderful of all. It was so much bigger on the inside, the way secret things always are in a child's imagination. It gave me my own room that was always just perfect. Sometimes, things would just show up in my room—things that I'd seen and secretly wanted, or things that I'd never even dreamed were possible. I liked to wander, too. The hallways didn't always lead to where they were supposed to. I got the feeling that this was the box's version of hide and seek. That was always my favorite game, too.

The funny man didn't play so much anymore, though I knew he once must have. He wasn't always funny, either. Sometimes he was angry, and a lot of the time he was sad. I hated it when he was sad.

"I wish you'd talk to me," he said once.

I looked at him, confused. We talked a lot.

"Out loud," he said. "The way I talk to you. I wish I could hear your voice."

I shook my head. My voice had been lost for almost as long as I could remember. I didn't know where to find it, but for the first time, I wished that I knew where it was, if only to see the funny man smile. He was so sad and so lonely, with just me and his funny box for company.

"It's somewhere," he said, and he brightened a little at the thought. "It's somewhere in all of time and space, and we'll explore all of it until we find it."

He hummed quietly to himself and turned to fiddle with the toggles and buttons and wires that powered the box, but I felt sad. If we found my voice, would he finally remember to take me home? I didn't want to go home. I planned on staying inside the box forever. I _never_ wanted to go home.

We finally found it inside a cave, located in some wonderful place with a rainbow sky, and fields that smelled like cotton candy. The cave was dark and deep and scary, and I didn't want to go in, but the funny man took my hand and I wasn't scared anymore. The monsters ran away from the funny man.

We went inside, and the cave was just as scary as it had seemed from the outside, but I gripped the funny man's hand hard and tried not to be afraid.

"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," he said quietly. "I was too late. I'm sorry. But at least I can make you whole again."

We found my voice cowering behind a rock formation. It had been scared away such a long time ago, and it had been hiding all this time in this scary place. It was too frightened to come out. I didn't really blame it.

But the funny man held his hand out to it. "Come on," he said. "It's time to come home."

* * *

I opened my eyes, and everything was too bright, too white. It hurt my eyes, and I was quick to cover them with my hands. There was something beeping, but it was too loud, too immediate. I didn't understand; the cave, the funny man, where were they?

"I'm here," he said, and his hands covered my own over my eyes. His voice sounded strange to me. It was the same voice, but somehow different, like I was hearing with new ears. "I'm sorry it took me so long, but I'm here."

"Help me," I whispered, and my voice was raspy, rough from lack of use. "Help me, Doctor."

"Always." He helped me out of the bed I was lying on, and I felt so weak. He cradled me in his arms and carried me out. It wasn't until I heard the familiar door creak that I dared uncover my eyes. I got the feeling that she dimmed the lights purely for my sake, but everything still looked too bright and too sharp.

The funny man- the Doctor- set me down on a seat and took up his familiar position at the console. "All of time and space at our disposal," he said with a manic grin. "Where would you like to go first?"

"Somewhere wonderful," I said, and I was so unused to the sound of my voice that it startled me.

"I think I can manage that. Hold on tight!"

* * *

It wasn't until much later that I worked up the nerve to ask him about it. "The cave, my voice, was any of that real?"

"Of course it was," he said, distracted by whatever he was doing to the Tardis' systems.

"Do you even know what I'm talking about?"

"Haven't a clue." He looked up at me with those old, old eyes. "Do you think it was real?"

"I thought so, but-"

"No buts," he said. "If you thought it was real, then it was real."

"And the white room? Where was that?"

"If you really wanted to know," he said, "you would. The memories are in there if you want them."

I paused. The only memories I had beyond the funny man and his strange box were twisted flashes of nightmares. I shuddered. No, I did not want to know.

"Where to next?" I asked.

He smiled. "Some place wonderful."

Maybe one day I would remember, with my funny man close by to chase away the monsters in my head, but today, I was going on an adventure.

"Geronimo," I whispered as he threw a switch and the Tardis lurched and we hurtled off into the unknown.

* * *

**A/N **I have a couple of theories about what happened with the narrator, but nothing concrete. Also, I'm not precisely sure which Doctor this is. I _say_ 11 because of the "Geronimo" thing (even though he's not the one that says it) but I was kind of flipping between him an 9. Really though, it could be any one of a number of Doctors. Got an opinion?

And just to completely confuse you, I'm not even sure what gender the narrator is. I'm fairly certain it's female, but I kept it gender neutral, so it could be male.

This was one of those stories that just kind of poured out of me, so I'm pretty much coming at it from the same place you are.


End file.
